POP
That's when Disney film president Dick Cook offered audiences what he referred to as an "unfinished sneak peek" at the film, but what looked to us like a balls-to-the-wall, damn-near finished, fully produced, kick-ass trailer.

Some quick images and impressions...

A slice of light tears through the darkness, dissolving into grains of sand, blown away by the desert wind...

A sweeping landscape of a far-off Persian city. A wind-beaten caravan making its way through the orange-lit desert. Dark, swirling clouds gather in the distance...

A shot of the dagger. A long, curved blade. It's hand is clear, like an hour-glass, holding the titled Sands of Time...

A shot of Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince, standing on a wooden outcropping on the roof of a palace high above the city streets. This looks more like Assassin's Creed than Prince of Persia...

Narration by the Princess Tamina, played by Gemma Arterton. Some comic exchanges as they gallop along on horseback. Typical love-hate relationship...

A chase through the alleys of a Persian city...An attacking tiger...A snake leaps toward the Prince, but the dagger pauses time just before the snake's gaping, venomous jaws can strike...

A journey into the snow-capped mountains. Not just deserts, it seems...

The Prince climbing up the towering, exterior walls of a castle as archers fire arrows...

Shots of a villainous Ben Kingsley and hints of a more powerful, robe-cloaked demon controlling him.

Lastly, the Prince and Tamina enter a vast, underground tomb. It begins to crumble down around them, the high hallways collapsing, entire portions of the building tumbling down an incline as the Prince leaps and runs and ducks and rolls as audiences would, of course, expect.

Overall, the trailer was beautifully shot, atmospheric, action-packed and exactly what one would hope from a Prince of Persia film. With the release date (May 28, 2010) still a ways away, who knows when viewers will be able to see the trailer in theatres. But we can assure those of you who might be anxious that it should be worth the wait.

TSA
While Cage did not show a trailer for the film, he did show an EPK-style presentation complete with a significant amount of footage from the film. Put aside all the talking heads and what's left was a rather impressive-looking, magical action-adventure film. Cage, as the sorcerer Balthazar Blake, enlists comic actor Jay Baruchel as his reluctant and disbeliving apprentice to fight the forces of evil, personified here by Alfred Molina as Horvath.

The major sequences implied by the quasi-trailer were a massive battle in New York's Chinatown in which an asian warrior transforms into a giant dragon...Another sequence looked like a car chase in which the cars in question could transform into other kinds of moving vehicles...Central Park appears to be the location of another magical battle...There are glowing sigils and flaming mystic symbols galore...And, of course, there are a number of "training sequences" in which Baruchel discovers his evolving magical powers, leading to a Fantasia homage in which the budding wizard makes a number of mops dance around the room.

Overall, the footage looked like this were a dark, though family-friendly adventure. It wasn't enough to get a real sense of the project, but seeing Cage with long hair and a Fu Man Chu beared makes us think this might be another one for the Nic Cage Hair Salon